Henry Handel Richardson was the pseudonym of Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson, a writer who was born in 1870 to a reasonably well-off family which later fell on hard times. The author's family lived in various Victorian towns and from the age of 13 to 17 Richardson attended boarding school at the Presbyterian Ladies' College in Melbourne, Victoria. It's this experience that feeds directly into The Getting of Wisdom.

Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson (1870 1946), known by her pen name Henry Handel Richardson, was an Australian author. Richardson boarded Presbyterian Ladies' College (PLC) in Melbourne in 1883, where she fell in love with an older schoolgirl; the feelings of adolescent females awakening to their sexuality were reflected in her novel The Getting of Wisdom.